The present invention relates to the conveying of randomly supplied articles, especially in a manner producing a destacking, separation, and alignment of the articles.
Articles conveyed in bulk, such as mail in the form of differently sized packages (e.g., boxes, flats and softpacks) are generally randomly oriented and possibly stacked one upon the other (i.e., a three-dimensional arrangement). It is desirable to transform the packages from such a bulk state to a state more acceptable for handling, such as a de-stacked, single file, aligned state. Frequently, this is performed manually which, of course, is very labor intensive.
An object of the present invention is to perform that function automatically.